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Siren checks a user’s currently installed version of your iOS app against the version that is currently available in the App Store.

If a new version is available, a language localized alert can be presented to the user informing them of the newer version, and giving them the option to update the application. Alternatively, Siren can notify your app through alternative means, such as a custom user interface.

If your user’s device is set to one of the supported locales, an update message will appear in that language. If a locale is not supported, than the message will appear in English.

You may want the update dialog to always appear in a certain language, ignoring the user’s device-specific setting. You can enable it like so:

// In this example, we force the `Russian` language.
Siren.shared.presentationManager = PresentationManager(forceLanguageLocalization: .russian)

Device Compatibility

If an app update is available, Siren checks to make sure that the version of iOS on the user’s device is compatible with the one that is required by the app update. For example, if a user has iOS 11 installed on their device, but the app update requires iOS 12, an alert will not be shown. This takes care of the false positive case regarding app updating.

Testing

Testing Siren Locally

Temporarily change the version string in Xcode (within the .xcodeproj file) to an older version than the one that’s currently available in the App Store. Afterwards, build and run your app, and you should see the alert.

If you currently don’t have an app in the store, change your bundleID to one that is already in the store. In the sample app packaged with this library, we use the App Store Connect app’s bundleID: com.apple.AppStoreConnect.

Words of Caution

Occasionally, the iTunes JSON will update faster than the App Store CDN, meaning the JSON may state that the new version of the app has been released, while no new binary is made available for download via the App Store. It is for this reason that Siren will, by default, wait 1 day (24 hours) after the JSON has been updated to prompt the user to update. To change the default setting, please modify the value of showAlertAfterCurrentVersionHasBeenReleasedForDays.

App Submission

App Store Review

The App Store reviewer will not see the alert. The version in the App Store will always be older than the version being reviewed.

You can leave Siren configured as normal. Phased rollout will continue to auto-update apps. Since all users can still manually update your app directly from the App Store, Siren will ignore the phased rollout and will prompt users to update.

You can set showAlertAfterCurrentVersionHasBeenReleasedForDays to 7, and Siren will not prompt any users until the latest version is 7 days old, after the phased rollout is complete.

You can remotely disable Siren until the rollout is done using your own API / backend logic.

Attribution

Special Thanks

A massive shout-out and thank you goes to the following folks:

Aaron Brager for motivating me and assisting me in building the initial proof-of-concept of Siren (based on Harpy) back in 2015. Without him, Siren may never have been built.

All of Harpy’s Contributors for helping building the feature set from 2012-2015 that was used as the basis for the first version of Siren.

All of Siren’s Contributors for helping make Siren as powerful and bug-free as it currently is today.